Sorry if this has been asked before, but I have searched and found nothing.

I have just downloaded the trial of Fusion, and find that so far, it works fine. The trouble I have is that when in Windows, my Firewire device (camcorder) can not be detected.
There are a number of little USB icons at the bottom of the Windows screen for printer etc. but no Firewire devices.
This makes the whole thing rather useless, as I only need fusion to run my Windows editing programme. I have used Bootcamp in the past, but the constant re-booting is a drag.

Before you boot the virtual machine, open the settings for the virtual machine and try adding the firewire device using the options available. I remember to have seen it there. Once thats done, you can start the virtual machine and your windows machine can see the drive.

Thanks for the replies, but there is nothing for adding a firewire device within the menu. OSX can see the camera, and I wonder if this is the problem. As I understand it, when a device is visible in "Virtual Windows", it dismounts from the Mac side and vice versa. Although I can appreciate this, it does not help with getting the thing recognised.

No virtualization supports firewire devices directly in the guest OS. Fusion can let you access any mounted local disk (firewire, IDE, etc) using VMware Shared Folders or Windows/File Sharing. This allows you get at storage but no other firewire devices.

Firewire is more prevalent on the Mac, that's it has not been a past focus of x86-on-x86 virtualization. I have no idea about futures in this area. I can't see it coming frankly.

Thats cleared that up then. At least I only have the trial version of VM Fusion, and have not yet wasted my money on it.
It's a real shame as video cameras are probably the main thing to connect by firewire, so you think they would be supported.

Many thanks again for your help, and to all who have taken the time to reply